


The Healer's Heart

by Halfblood_Fiend



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Blood, Carver Hawke Being an Asshole, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Near Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 03:38:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10585653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halfblood_Fiend/pseuds/Halfblood_Fiend
Summary: Stasia Hawke has found herself in need of a healer.





	

Stasia took a deep stabilizing breath and knocked upon the lantern-lit door on the edge of Darktown. She pressed the bunched up robes to the gash on her left thigh and tried not to think about her throbbing right arm where it hung uselessly at her side. It was bad enough that Anders would berate her this time for sure.

She'd already been to the clinic six times this week, but always as a bit of a joke. She came in with bruises and skinned knees claiming she needed expert healing. Anders' lovely mouth twisted into a knowing smirk as she asked him ridiculous questions: ‘How serious is it, healer? Am I going to die? I think I'm bleeding out!’ He usually played along too: ‘Oh, this looks bad. I'll need to amputate for sure.’ Sometimes she believed the lovely blonde man was seeing right through her. Stasia visited often just to see him. Scrapes were her thin guise as she bid for his well sought after attention. Anders was patient with her and he made the time, even if all she got was a quick touch of healing magic and a warm smile. It was worth it for the precious minutes she could steal. "Take care, Hawke," he would murmur to her every time, turning away to tend to a needier patient. He made her warm. And she just never got tired of hearing those three simple words. But she needed more. More time to talk, more time with him. So she made her visits more frequent, more colloquial.

But Stasia was here in the middle of the night now, with a dislocated shoulder and a scrap of fabric wrapped around her leg as a makeshift tourniquet. The fun and games had come to a halting end. If Anders wasn't in tonight, she'd probably die.

She knocked again and leaned heavily on the door frame. _Please be here. Please help me._ And when she was starting to feel she would collapse, the door cracked open.

"Hello? Hawke?!" Anders pulled the door wide and caught Stasia as she swayed forward on her bad leg.

"Help," she said feebly as pain lanced up her entire left side when she moved.

“Stasia!”

Anders ducked under her left arm and helped her hobble inside, leading her to one of the many worn tables he used to treat people. His clinic was empty so late at night. Jars of salves and potion bottles glittered in the low lantern light along one wall while empty bedrolls lined the other, some of them stained by substances Stasia didn’t want to think about. It must have been quiet at the clinic and, judging by his half hazard dress and the lack of his overcoat, Anders might’ve actually been sleeping in the back for once before Stasia dragged herself down here. A small pang of guilt stuck in her throat. Anders always looked so tired, doing everything he could for refugees, and then here she was in the dead of night. She couldn’t even let him sleep. She was too selfish sometimes… Her eyes fluttered closed.

“Stasia? Stasia!” Anders said sharply, snapping his fingers before her eyes as he eased her onto the tabletop. “Stay with me. Listen to my voice. Focus.”

She wanted to ask him why she wouldn’t be focused on someone as beautiful as him but she couldn’t seem to make her lips move.

“Who did this to you? Nevermind. I suppose you made plenty of enemies with the Red Iron. And fraternizing with Bartrand, I’m sure. And the Kirkwall Guards… Perhaps it would be easier to name who _wouldn’t_ have done this.” Stasia couldn’t quite tell if he was speaking to her or to himself, but she tried to focus like he asked her to anyways. Anders scurried towards his jars and came back with a thick white paste and a knife, then he set to work cutting away her robes to better see the gash in her thigh. She knew what he saw. It was a deep gash across her flesh from a guard assassin’s knife. Slit close to her inner thigh, it gushed thick blood in the darkness and Stasia’s leg had crumpled beneath her immediately. Blinded with pain, she had become all but useless. Feeble spells flew from her fingertips as she called out for her brother.

“You didn’t make it here yourself?” Anders asked her, attempting to stem the bleeding with a cloth. “You couldn’t have! Who the hell just left you here on my doorstep to die, Stasia?!” He sounded almost angry as his body flared up with blue healing magic. For half a second, Stasia thought Justice had come out, but when she looked at Anders, he was himself, brows furrowed, brown eyes fierce.

Aveline had helped her tie a rudimentary tourniquet above her wound and Carver had run her sorry ass to Anders’ clinic. At her urging, she shooed him away to help Aveline and Varric with the rest of the phony guard patrol. It hadn’t even crossed her mind that Anders may not have been there and she could have died, not until Carver was long gone.

“Pray to the Maker it’s not poisoned. I can hardly tell! Maker’s breath! This is so bad. It is not _your_ sole duty to make the streets of Kirkwall safe, you know. If you keep playing hero like this, you’ll wind up dead! And I don’t think _either_ of us wants that.”

Stasia grinned to herself, heart fluttering. He didn’t want her to die. How thoughtful of him.

A few moments more and the tingle of Anders’ magic ceased. He tried to wipe at the wound with his blood-logged cloth but he cast it aside with a grunt of frustration instead.

“Maker, you’ve lost too much. Wait here. Don’t go anywhere.”

He disappeared from her field of vision and Stasia let her eyes flutter closed. She felt weak and clammy, and it was difficult to breathe, but at least she was safe. Anders wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. Of that, she was certain. There was a kind of peace here. She would never have believed that anywhere in Darktown could be safe, let alone peaceful, but there it was. Anders _made_ this place that way. It didn’t matter how chaotic their first meeting was, Anders always struck her as equal to peace.

“Oh no, you don’t! I haven’t even checked for concussions yet!” Anders snapped, shaking Stasia by the shoulder. She screamed as the dislocated side jostled against the table, her startling green eyes flying open. “Maker’s breath, I’m so sorry! Your shoulder too? Stasia, what in the world have you been doing?” He uncorked a bottle of opaque liquid with his teeth and eased a hand beneath her head as he pressed the bottle to her lips. “A restorative,” he murmured. “You’ve lost too much blood. This should help.”

She tried to drink obediently but the potion was so bitter that she choked on it. Anders clucked at her impatiently and offered it to her again. “I’m not asking you, Stasia, now _drink it_.”

When she had finished the whole flask, eyes streaming, Stasia coughed, “So…pushy…”

“If you’d rather I let you die…?”

He bent over her leg again and dabbed a fresh cloth into the jar of white paste. When he touched it to her half-healed wound it sent fire shooting up through her body. Stasia had to grit her teeth to keep from crying out again.

“No poison,” Anders muttered. “You got lucky.” His body shone with shimmering blue light once more as the tingling of healing magic returned.

“Funny. I don’t _feel_ that lucky,” Stasia muttered, which wasn’t wholly true. As she gazed at his sharp profile and focused features, she felt fairly lucky indeed.

“I don’t suppose I can encourage you to keep your head down now?” Anders asked. “There are a few of us out there that would be moved by your passing.”

“‘A few of _us’_?”

He pursed his lips as his magic slowly diminished. Anders sagged a bit against the table and let out a breath of relief, but he didn’t look at her. “I hope you do not mind too terribly, but your shoulder will have to be fixed the old-fashioned way. It might be painful.”

Somewhat disappointed, Stasia let the subject drop and pushed herself to sitting with her good arm. Already she was feeling, well, _alive_ again. The potion, she reasoned, was behind it. Some of the weakness had left her but the room spun a little.

“On your stomach, please, Hawke. And you’ll need to relax as well.”

“What’re you—”

“I need a weight. This will just have to do.” Anders returned to her with rope and a sack of potatoes from the back.

“Asking me to dinner?” Stasia snickered.

“Fixing your blasted arm,” Anders snapped, silencing her as he nudged her to hang her arm over the side of the table and tied the sack to her wrist. “It will hurt, but you have to try to relax, Hawke. Gravity will do the rest.”

Stasia hissed as Anders let her arm hang uselessly but she put it from her mind when he bent down only inches from her face to look into her eyes.

“Anders—”

“Follow my finger with only your eyes.” She did as she was told as he moved his hand around her field of vision.

“I never hit my head,” she huffed.

“Better to check anyway. I can never be sure what kind of trouble you get yourself into. Speaking of…” He fixed her gaze with his and asked sternly, “What _were_ you doing? And who _left_ you here?”

She didn’t quite know why, but Stasia blushed hard under his penetrating stare. “Aveline needed help clearing out bandits posing as guards and I elected to help. And Carver left me but only because I told him to go back to Varric and Aveline!”

“You’re lucky I’d be hunted if I set foot out of this clinic… But what if I had needed to make a house call? What if…” His brows suddenly knit like a thought had suddenly struck him. “Hawke. You’re a mage. Don’t you know how to heal _yourself_?”

Now Stasia’s whole body grew hot and she fidgeted under his gaze. “I-I…I don’t know how.”

Anders balked. “What do you mean ‘you don’t know how’? No one ever taught you? All this time I thought you were coming in with bruises and scrapes just to see me, not because you actually _required_ healing! How could you have gone so long without knowing? How have you even survived this long?”

She started to explain herself in a gasping stutter but was saved by a soft popping in her hanging shoulder. All she felt immediately was relief, both in her shoulder and for being saved from a very awkward admission.

Anders probed it gingerly with his fingertips, but it seemed that the worst of the pain had gone. He bade her sit up and touch her opposite shoulder and when he was satisfied it was back in place, he handed her a new salve.

“For the swelling,” he said. “It will ache for a few days yet, but there doesn’t seem to be any lingering damage. But keep an eye out, just in case. Now then.” Barely stifling a yawn, Anders plodded towards his back room and came back with his staff and a traveling cloak fastened around his neck.

Stasia looked at him blankly. “Where are you going?”

“I’m taking you home,” Anders said impatiently. “I’m not about to let you wander around alone at this time of night. And who knows where your friends got off to. Now, come on.”

“Aw, so I _don’t_ need to stay overnight for observation?”

Anders’ mouth pressed into a hard line. “No.”

Her heart withered a little in her chest, the smile dropping from her face like a rock from the cliffside. Stasia tried to tell herself the one letter declaration _wasn’t_ an outright rejection but… it sure felt like it. Anders had been relatively easy to joke with in the last few weeks, and sometimes he even flirted back with her, but that one word seemed so…final. Anders wasn’t just answering her question this time, he was shutting her down.

Seeming to sense her distress, Anders sighed. “You would do better going back to your house. It’s certainly got to be more comfortable than a bedroll on the floor here?” He gave her a weak smile.

Shrugging halfheartedly, Stasia eased herself off the table and tucked her short red hair behind her ear. Anders offered an arm to her, but she ignored him, limping to where her staff lay abandoned on the floor instead. Anders had just reached the door when it banged open and there in the doorway stood a bloodied, but triumphant Carver.

“Not dead yet, sister?” he grinned, blue eyes glittering beneath all the gore.

Anders scowled and opened his mouth but Stasia never got to hear what he had to say.

“You missed an _amazing_ battle,” Carver went on loudly. “You should’ve seen it! I could do a whole lot more without you there, getting in my way. Aveline has already gone back to the Keep, so I thought I’d come by and help you to Gamlen’s. Varric’s standing guard down the alley but the road home should be clear now. Thanks for looking after her, mage. It’s just too bad you could save her after all. Anyways, come on, sister. I’m tired from all that work you made me do.” And with that he marched away, sword slung over his shoulder.

Stasia flushed hot and angry but she was sure that she looked like nothing compared to how red in the face Anders had gotten. He glowered at Carver’s back and she wondered if this was one of those moments when he was going to turn into Justice.

“Thank you for saving me, Anders,” she said gently, reaching out to touch his arm.

“I’d rather you not get hurt at all,” he replied stiffly, clearly still bristling. “It would seem that there is a gaping hole in your education, Hawke. Next time you come in, I shall have to remedy it.”

“Oh? I don’t think I have a head for healing.”

“Nonsense. You have a kind heart. I’d say that’s perfect for healing.” He looked at her and graced her with the first genuine smile that she had seen all night. It made her stomach flip.

Then all at once, Anders’ gaze became too intense for her and she gulped and averted her eyes. Trying to ignore her racing heart, she mumbled another thanks and stepped into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> Could be a thing, but if it is, it'll be my first attempt at a slow burn. And probably with a bit of Varricmance in there too. lmao


End file.
